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Most Innovative Online Dating Apps to Try

Tired of swiping and reading profiles? These online dating apps match you based on what you hate, the places you go, and the music you love.

By Ben KharakhPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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Everyone wants somebody to love. And if you're anti-love then you're probably a wounded bird struggling to take flight. If you hate that sentiment there's an online dating app for that! If you think your jadedness is at fault, there are online dating apps for that!

And if you're just using humor and bitterness to deflect that you're actually desperate for emotional intimacy and you'd even be willing to take a risk and meet someone tonight, well, there's an app for that too. Online dating with Match.com works for some people, but there's way more out there than you might know. Stop looking for love in ways that don't work for you and pick the right way to experience the look of love.

With online dating apps like Tinder you only get a taste of your potential match. With Settle for Love you get the whole thing– the whole thing. That's because you're supposed to include your faults in addition to the rest of you. And it is, "The rest of you." People don't tend to lead with their faults. You don't shake someone's hand the first time you meet them and say, "I'm afraid of commitment." You don't break the ice at a party by saying, "I've ruined every relationship I've ever been in."

You're going to find out someone's faults either way, though, so better to be upfront than coy. Plus, it takes a certain degree of comfort with one's self to share one's shortcomings.

And, of course, there's this quote from Mr. Rogers, "Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like 'struggle.' To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."

If Settle for Love can create a dating pool using a fraction of the wisdom of Mr. Rogers that automatically sets it apart from all the other online dating apps.

There's a certain type of dude who uses online dating apps who judges potential matches based on their music tastes. Hey, dude, go sign up for Settle for Love and include that behavior as part of your faults. You're the kind of dude who inspired the "Cool Girl" monologue in the film Gone Girl!

Setting yourself up as the arbiter of taste has a gross quality to it, especially when your identity happens to align pretty closely with the most privileged group in American society: cisgendered, heterosexual affluent white men. Suddenly you're wielding popular culture like a sword. Ick!

Tastebuds hopes to level change that dynamic by creating a dating pool through their shared love of music. You can judge people together now, or you can actually use music to connect to each other on a deeper level. After all, for some people music is life. If you listen to music at work, while commuting, at the gym, and while running your errands then music plays a very special part in your life. Why not let that connect you to a special someone?

What makes Hinge stand out among other online dating apps is that it syncs up with your Facebook profile and creates a dating pool of people who are friends of friends. This should increase the likelihood of success because, unlike apps like Tinder, your potential matches have been filtered out by your own Facebook friends.

And if your Facebook friends with people you don't trust to do that then what's up with that? You're just adding people to be nice? Being disingenuous isn't nice! Go sign up with Settle for Love and include, "Is Facebook friends with a lot of people I don't like," among your faults.

You know that feeling when someone's looking at you and then you turn your head and you see that someone actually was looking at you? And they turn their heads real quick so that you don't know that they were looking? With Happn you might go on a date with that person!

What makes Happn unique relative to other online dating apps is that your potential matches come from a dating pool of people you regularly cross paths with. There are other online dating apps that offer a similar approach. Huggle keeps track of places you've been to, while HelloTruly has you check into places you visit and even includes a feature that lets people see that you are at the same place as them.

But only Happn tells you who you pass regularly enough that there's a sense of magic in play. Synchronicity! You might end up on a date with the person you'd never have expected to date but who was right in front of you all along.

Unlike apps like Tinder that put visuals above all else, Loveflutter is one of the few online dating apps that focuses on something else. In Loveflutter's case you see a 140 character bio, age, location, and any similarities you may have in common. You can see their image if you tap on it, but you might also find yourself just looking at the bio. As the Manic Street Preachers said, "Choice is skeletal in everyone's life." How you make your choices reveals your true self much more than what you look like.

Loveflutter also throws date ideas your way, and has a feature that just asks people you've matched with if they'd like to go on a date with you. Speed dating with depth!

Hily makes use of machine learning to continuously improve the quality of your potential matches based on how often you interact with your dating pool. Some of the considerations Hily makes include length of conversation, similar interests, and photos sent.

Additionally, Hily verifies your identity using Facebook and blocks people if they receive too many complaints. That way you can rest easy if you're thinking, "Online dating: is someone trying to con me?"

What separates Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) is that is pushes itself to keep being the best dating app it can be. Every noon, men receive 21 potential matches (bagels) that they can like. Women then get to choose only from men who liked them. What CMB has found is that, “men love selection and women are selective." The app boasts that their user ratio is 60 percent women and 40 percent men.

Your potential matches come every day at noon, if you both liked each other one of you has 24 hours to send a message, and then you have a week to chat with them. After a week the conversation disappears. All of these time based mechanics are meant to nudge you along toward connecting and eventually meeting offline.

Swiping left or right, reading profiles, endless conversation. Who has the time to use all these online dating apps?! Once takes care of all that. Human matchmakers reduce your potential matches to a dating pool of one. If you both like each other, you have 24 hours to talk. Bingo bango date-o!

No, Tonight is not a Smashing Pumpkins themed dating app. No one thought that! Sorry for even bringing it up. Music is how I break the ice. I'm a perfect candidate for Tastebuds, but I would also shine on Tonight, an app that seems the best candidate for the "date right away" online dating apps.

You have to sign up by 6 PM to indicate that you're committed to a date that evening (if you break enough dates you'll get banned). Then your potential matches are whittled down until you land on a match that you might actually see that night. Exhilarating!

Hater is the only one of the online dating apps that creates a dating pool of potential matches based on mutual hate. Let's say you hate Trump, people who say they love avocado, people who say that sarcasm is their second language, people who identify as extroverted introverts, people who brag about how they love the best sipping whisky, people who brag about traveling to over 30 countries, and, hold up, I'm on a date right now after weeding out all those people out! Woo wee woo waa, great success! Oh, you hate people who quote Borat? Date's over!

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About the Creator

Ben Kharakh

Manic pixie dream goth. With appearances in Fortune, Vice, Gothamist, and McSweeney's.@benkharakh

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  • Komal9 months ago

    Innovation is required when it comes to improving the state of online dating. Singles want more and the current photo based actions are getting more of 19th century. I was more impressed with canada.meetoutside.com concept where I could browse some videos and video chat with the single men on it. At times I do not want to share my chat ids, so it is better to settle things on the dating app itself and see how it goes.

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